October 2006

Every few years one of those “Changing Face of America” articles comes along, reminding us that white people will soon be outnumbered by the “minorities.” A Christian Science Monitor article last week touched on it in a paragraph that read:

Between the last official census in 2000 and the one of 2050, non-Hispanic whites will have dwindled from 69 percent to a bare majority of 50.1 percent. The share who are Hispanic will have doubled to 24 percent. Asians also will have doubled to 8 percent of the population. African-Americans will have edged up to 14 percent. In other words, the US will be on the verge of becoming a “majority of minorities.”

Such articles are usually more celebratory of such demographic changes, though — more on the order of this much talked about New York Times article from 2001, in reaction to which gleeful white (and non-white) talking heads come on the news shows and express enthusiasm for the day that white people will come to know “what it feels like to be the minority.”

Well personally, I can’t wait. That’s right — just wait ‘til white people become a minority. Boy are we gonna start acting up then. I know I’m going to par-tay! Ya’all better look out, ‘cause white girl is in the house, and you’d best treat her special! Who knows? Maybe I’ll finally get hired somewhere. And I know it’s a little late, but Ivy League — look out, ‘cause here I come!

In other words, I’d say the comfort level of minorities in a predominately white society is pretty darn high. And considering how much some of them get a kick out of intimidating white people, I can’t WAIT to become the minority race. Then I can REALLY take over! As Cartman on South Park might say, “Respect my minoritah!”

Funny thing: when I immigrated to America from Russia, I didn’t expect Americans to be jumping for joy over it. Nor did I expect the kids in school to put on plastic smiles over the diversity of my once-a-week bathing habits. Kids sure do have it easier today with all the multicultural respect going around; today, you don’t take a bath — you get respect!

The contradiction in the PC glee, meanwhile, is worth noting. We’re expected to celebrate being outnumbered, or at least not assign any value judgment to it, positive or negative, because “people are people.” So no bemoaning of it is tolerated, since that would be racist. On the other hand, they’re always like, “Ha! See how whites like it!”

So which is it, PCniks: are we supposed to be euphoric, or disgruntled?

Meanwhile, according to that beloved 2001 Times article, the 20 fastest growing cities — mostly to the west or to the south — experienced a 5% white increase, along with 23% more blacks, 69% more Asians and 72% more Hispanics. You see? Everyone is following the white people! In contrast, look at Detroit — which white people have been fleeing for years: now everyone else is leaving too. Apparently, a city without white people isn’t working for non-white people.

In addition to a father, the “orphan” Madonna is trying to adopt/purchase has two living sets of grandparents in Malawi. It’s looking more and more like Madonna should rename the kid Elian Gonzales.

We have a father who signed over custody of his child but who now has a change of heart about the boy’s destiny (a more genuine change of heart than Juan Gonzales’ coerced reversal), and who admits he hates to see the boy leave the country. A battle to keep the child near his father is brewing and involves the boy’s uncle. The toddler is being described in the media as “the innocent victim of a legal stalemate. ”

A married lesbian couple I’m acquainted with, who live in Paris (one is a U.S. expatriate and the other a Canadian one), went the in vitro route, picking a sperm donor to fertilize eggs from one of the two ladies, who is now carrying that child. We’re talking Francophiles. We’re talking lesbians. We’re talking socialists. We’re talking champions of embryonic stem cell research and fierce critics of Bush, including his approach to the said research. So here’s the twist: When the mothers were asked if they’d like to donate and sign over the unused, remaining embryos from the procedure — which would otherwise just be discarded — to stem cell research, they declined. They somehow didn’t “feel right” about it.

Next: A married heterosexual couple I know in Pittsburgh recently had their second child. This liberal Jewish couple, at least one half coming from a liberal-Jewish family, are — like most working, apolitical, non-thinker young couples — recreational Bush bashers, including mocking and deriding his position on stem cells.

The latest option that birthing couples are given by hospitals these days is an offer to freeze and preserve the umbilical cord and placenta of the baby, which involves paying a small monthly or yearly rate — in the event of a catastrophic illness later in the baby’s life, that would require the use of stem cells (the best stem cells, of course, being that individual’s own). But this couple — who treat themselves to fancy meals at restaurants on a more or less weekly basis — declined to spring for preserving their child’s DNA-rich, stem cell-rich afterbirth.

So there you have it. Though we probably could have guessed. Somehow, “liberal hypocrisy” doesn’t quite cover it.

Drudge last week linked to an article about four Israeli doctors who were arrested for illegally experimenting on elderly individuals who hadn’t consented to such experiments or who didn’t have the ability to consent. Several of the patients died as a result of the experiments, some of the experiments had no scientific or medical benefit, and some were conducted despite warnings from senior doctors that they were illegal or unethical. Over the years, as the doctors’ careers advanced and they became known as experts in geriatric medicine, numerous complaints about the goings-on went unaddressed by hospital administration.

Since Israel is a civilized nation, its press exposed the experiments, its courts are actively bringing the violators to justice, and the Comptroller released a scathing report which also condemned the Health Ministry and the experimentation-control committees it established in hospitals in compliance with the Helsinki Accord of 1964.

Still, as my 2004 article “ Stem the Debate: Unethical Science Backfires” pointed out, human experimentation is precisely what can be expected from places that have the state’s blessing (in the form of funding) on embryonic stem cell research, and Israel is a leader in that field. (That’s why Christopher Reeve was over there every other month, pictured with the paralyzed victims of suicide bombers.) And yet this is the one thing Israel gets kudos on from the Left.

In the above-mentioned article, I wrote:

When did farming embryos for research and disposal become a legitimate avenue of research? If scientific research means pursuing all avenues [as some scientists say when asked about embryonic stem cell research], why not experiment on lunatics? Death row inmates aren’t busy either. Nor, for that matter, are the terminally ill or the elderly. These people have far less life potential than an embryo, anyway. If advancement is the priority, why not take an example from the Germans and Japanese, especially since our research is for creating cures and not plagues?

And so here we are. Sliding down that slope. And Israel is just the first country in which doctors have been exposed for this kind of thing. Imagine what goes on in other embryonic-stem-cell-research-leading countries that aren’t targeted for vilification, such as Belgium, Sweden, UK, Australia and Canada.

We are witnessing the implications of research unhampered by morality. This is the road we risk traveling down if our own government were to give its blessings to experimentation on embryos.

The child Madonna adopted, who is ubiquitously referred to as an “orphan” because his mother is dead, has a father living and working in Malawi, as well as at least one set of grandparents. Nonetheless, Madonna has adopted little David Banda to give him a more comfortable life in America.

Does this mean that when Madonna comes home with the child, we can expect Bill Clinton and the American Left to call for the Bush administration to send in U.S. Marshals to storm the Ciccone complex and confiscate the boy at gunpoint? After all, wasn’t the lesson from the Elian Gonzales episode that “a boy belongs with his father”?

Will Madonna be labeled a “kidnapper” as Elian Gonzales’ relatives in Miami were called by leftists seething with contempt for those who would face down Castro and make a life in America look somehow more desirable than a life in Cuba?

So any minute now, we should witness outrage over this child’s kidnapping to America — worse — sale to America, right? As one U.S.-based BBC journalist, in espousing the virtue of a boy living with his father rather than with freedom, summed up the difference between America and Cuba: “Ok, so he won’t grow up with a four-car garage, but at least he’ll be with his father.”

For that matter, why wasn’t Elian — who also didn’t have a mother — considered an orphan? If the only difference in Banda’s favor is that his father approved his sale to Madonna, that’s not even a difference, considering that Juan Gonzales approved his son’s departure to America, and called his family in Miami to make sure the boy got there. So we’re left with a very analogous situation. In fact, the case for returning Banda to poverty-stricken Africa is stronger than the case for returning Elian to poverty-stricken Cuba because, unlike Cuba, Malawi isn’t a repressive police state with human rights abuses around every corner. Additionally David’s mother didn’t die trying to get him here the way Elian’s did.

It should be just a matter of minutes before the voices of consistent justice start howling for the return of little David to his father as they did for the return of Elian, right? I’m holding my breath.

Attack the causes of poverty and you remove the roots of conflict — that is the message the Nobel Committee wanted to send out by awarding its Peace Prize to the creator of a micro-credit scheme which benefits millions, analysts said on Friday.

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, the so-called ‘Banker to the Poor’, and the Grameen Bank he founded three decades ago were the surprise winners of the award for pioneering a system of small-scale loans that has helped 6.6 million people escape the grind of poverty.

Commendable, of course. And nice to see a less political choice of awardee than usual coming from the Nobel Committee. But I’m confused. I thought America was the cause of all the wars in the world. America — which is resented for its wealth. So which is it? Does poverty cause the wars, or does wealthy America? They can’t have it both ways.

Actually, the Nobel prize should go to the person who figures out how to stop rich Muslims from trying to kill everyone. Now that would deserve a prize.

LifeSiteNews.com reported last week that 13,500 Ugandan youths have promised to be chaste until marriage as part of the country’s fight against AIDS. Uganda has been a success story in the effectiveness of the “ABC program” that Bush introduced as part of his five-year, $15 billion plan to fight AIDS in 15 mostly African nations. Despite the indisputable effectiveness of abstinence, liberal elements including the ACLU and the Alan Guttmacher Institute poo-poo abstinence education and even kick it out of schools.

I think I figured out why liberals scoff at abstinence education. See, a liberal wants to know that people — especially people in miserable, poverty-stricken places like Africa — are having sex. It depresses a liberal to think that people aren’t having sex, or are having sex with only one person. A liberal assumes that Africans are like liberals, for whom food and sex are core values. And since there’s no food, sex is the only happiness that these poor people have.

What’s interesting is that the liberal media, in contrast to its sneering tone at Christian abstinence, is much less cynical when it’s African Muslims who are practicing faith-based abstinence. Note this line from a San Francisco Chronicle article last year about circumcision lowering the risk of HIV infection: “Although the apparent protective effect of circumcision has been noted for more than 20 years, doubts linger as to whether circumcision itself is protective, or whether the lower risk may be the result of cultural practices among those who circumcise. HIV rates are low in Muslim communities, for example, which practice male circumcision but also engage in ritual washing before sex and frown on promiscuity.” (Unless it’s ritual gang rape, of course.)

But see? No sneering cynicism. It’s only non-promiscuous Christians who freak libs out. (How dare Christians not be trying to get a disease! Indeed, pushing Christians toward sexual abandon could be part of the Left’s war on Christianity; they’re trying to help the jihad kill off Christians.)

In light of the Left’s war on abstinence, their simultaneous war on pharmaceutical companies has never made sense to me. If pharmaceutical companies didn’t work at a profit, they wouldn’t be able to provide liberals with all their STD medications, or with the Viagra so they could keep cheating on their spouses. Do they realize the cost of bringing a drug to market? If they want to schtupp, they’ve got to pay. Sex is expensive these days.

The AP reported on Saturday that the Pentagon “will investigate a Marine’s sworn statement that guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as a common practice.”

It doesn’t sound plausible that this kind of abuse is routine and didn’t come out earlier. It’s possible that the braggarts were making up some exploits to impress the female Marine, a paralegal who stopped by briefly at the U.S. Navy station in Cuba last month.

If it does turn out to be true, these acts are reprehensible, of course. At the same time, if one were to borrow a page from the logic presented recently by the first Muslim Miss England Hammasa Kohistani — who said that stereotyping is turning even moderate Muslims into terrorists — then it would be fair to say that our moderate but unfairly stereotyped troops are falling prey to the same power of suggestion.

You might have heard about a Maine couple who tied up and kidnapped their pregnant 19-year-old daughter and started toward New York, where they were going to force her to have an abortion (since NY allows abortion well into pregnancy). The girl escaped and the parents were arrested.

But did you notice their name? Nicholas and Lola Kampf.

What’s more, investigators found “rope, duct tape, scissors and a .22-caliber rifle…in the Kampfs’ Lexus and Nicholas Kampf had a loaded .22- caliber magazine clip in his pants pocket.”

So what we have are “pro-choicers” who are also pro-gun if the gun can be used to enforce a “choice.” Now that’s a whole new spin on the term “gun control.”

Everyone from “Clinton is a brilliant politician” Democrats and Republicans to The Weakly Standard tried to make us believe that Clinton had the whole tiff with Wallace planned. The fact that The Standard had an op-ed about Clinton being a clever genius who had the whole thing planned out confirms for me that he didn’t. After all, The Weakly Standard never even got the Balkans straight. And still doesn’t get the Clintons. I guess spending half of one’s life on the Left reaps a lot of confusion.

The whole thing with the Clintons is that they still believe they’re untouchable and indestructible, and so they don’t plan. They have a history of walking into easily avoidable quicksand, only to have to claw their way out after. That’s how “intelligent” they are. (Two examples just off the cuff: Bill not visiting the WTC after the ‘93 bombing even just for a photo op; Hillary kissing Suha Arafat just weeks before announcing her candidacy for senator of heavily Jewish New York.)

So here’s an excerpt from a blind man’s analysis — the only analysis you need:

Conservatives–who believed Clinton’s tirade was nothing more than an act — are simply playing into the Clinton myth of infallibility, but the facts tell us something completely different.

When the former president began his meltdown, Chris Wallace said Clinton’s press secretary was urging FOX producers to cut the interview short. Wallace also claims Clinton handlers were complaining the interview was going on too long, violating the agreement previously established which set parameters for the discussion.

Wallace has also said Clinton seethed after the interview was concluded and, while leaving the studio, producers told Wallace that Clinton threatened to fire those in his entourage if they ever put him in a similar situation.

Now if this was all an act, Bill Clinton should receive the next Academy Award for best performance in a fictional drama. In reality, what the interview did demonstrate was Bill Clinton would have a hard time learning to deal with a confrontational press…No, Bill Clinton wasn’t faking it…and those who believe it was all a show for the Democratic base are simply giving this man too much credit.

Let me explain what trips up the folks who believe the Cilintons to be intelligent. You don’t have to be very smart — if the public is stupid enough. The Clintons never banked on their intelligence; they banked on our stupidity.

Oh, but he’s a genius — he can see an issue from 12 different sides. Yeah? Well, how ’bout a guy who can pick one? How ’bout a guy who can solve the damn issue? You know, a guy who can see through the clutter? Here’s one that puts its finger on this “thinker”: “Clinton never thought beyond the next news cycle.”

In a separate but related matter, Clinton said in the interview that he’s never criticized Bush. Did he mean, like, in his sleep? Like, when he’s unconscious he doesn’t criticize Bush? Because he spends every waking moment doing so. Or does it depend on your definition of “never”? Like I said, the Clintons think we’re idiots. And half of us are. Hence Bill’s enduring popularity. So, as if we needed it, here’s a freakin’ Washington Post article to refute that, titled “Legacy of 42nd President Framed with Barbs at 43rd.” There’s also this from The Anchoress blog.